Digital Dim Sum: Musings about the Web

Random NYC occurences

I meet a friend from college for drinks on a random night at Lincoln Center.  Last minute, I get rush seats to “La Boheme”…poor Mimi.  Beautiful, haunting tale.  Very well done at the Met…in row K orchestra sitting next to a woman who is studying opera and trying out for the Met in 3 days.  She tells me about the life of an opera singer.  I hope she makes it - lovely, young woman.

I went to the “Merchant of Venice” by myself this past Sunday- was going to buy a ticket off of Craig’s list.  I show up 5 minutes late and the woman has sold my ticket in spite of us talking on the phone twice as I am in the taxi on the way up to meet her.  I am waiting in cancellation line and end up buying a house seat (4 rows from front) for $100.  The guy sitting next to me who sells me the ticket invests in Broadway shows.

My wifi is having issues at home, unfortunately. I am a coffee shop working and someone asks me how to get wireless on their Mac working.  It turns out he owns 60+ Warhols (has been collecting his whole life).  He invites me to a show of his collection at the Lawrenceville School in Princeton, NJ.  The link to his collection is www.propertyfromthecollectionofgregorymccoy.com.  While I don’t think I’ll attend, these are just the odd, but serendipitous occurrences that happen when you’re in the right place and right time in NYC…

Angry birds, oh, angry birds

Why do you have me at free (for now)? 

Another recent time sink which fortunately has not yet dug into my pockets is Angry Birds.  I have been a long time Blackberry user (relic of my last job) and recently bought the iTouch, waiting for the iPhone4 to come out on Verizon in February.  One of the applications that I had heard much about was “Angry Birds.”  There is a free version (4 levels) and a $.99 version (more levels) in App Store.  This is possibly even more addictive than Cityville although does not have the social gaming element, e.g. you play the game by yourself on your iPhone, iTouch, or Android, not with other Facebook friends.

Angry Birds is very easy to learn.  You basically are sling-shooting birds into structures that have green pig faces under them and trying to eliminate the pigs.  Maybe it’s the snorts of the green pigs and the cheering of your aviary colleagues who do flips as you ready to launch one of them, but this is another game that you makes you want to keep getting to the next level.

You can easily pick up, pause, or and put down Angry Birds and each game only lasts about 30 seconds depending how long you take to position your shot.  In the free version, you get ads by Ad Mob in the right corner for other applications that go away once you start playing.

Having played for an hour, I am on Level 3 of 4, which will beckon the question of once I reach Level 4, will I spring for the $.99 version or continue playing the levels I have mastered?  For now, I will continue playing the free version as I am a bit wary of enabling this game to suck up more time by upgrading to the version which has limitless levels and no ads.

Digital crack: how Cityville sucked me (and my wallet) in

I never thought I’d be one of those “social gamers.”  Aren’t those only women in their 30s in the Midwest who watch HSN?  To be fair, I am a woman in my 30s and I grew up in Minnesota.  But still, I have been toughing it out in NYC for the past five years and hardly consider myself someone with that much time to waste. 

Somehow I missed the Mafia Wars and Farmville craze, despite getting many Facebook invites from friends, but in preparation for some interviews, I started playing Zynga’s Cityville aka Crackville.  I’ve now spent well over $60 (ok, maybe more like $80) in 2 weeks of playing this game buying extra City Cash (not real cash, but digital currency) so I could get additional energy to harvest my corn crops and collect rents so I can buy expansion licenses to build out my town.

If I were to read that last sentence aloud, I would have thought I’ve lost it— additional energy to harvest crops and collects rents to buy expansion licenses — what?!  But this is what the game is all about and the makers of Cityville know just how long to let you play before you run out of energy and City Cash and need to deposit real money (via Paypal) into the game to continue playing.  Even though the makers of Cityville claim you can get to Level 60 without depositing a dime of real currency, I have not found the cheat for that.

What’s so fun about “building out a digital city?” There is something very gratifying about clicking on buildings and collecting rents and clicking on crops and harvesting cranberries.  Even though you’re just clicking away on an application in Facebook, you feel like you accomplished something as coins, bolts of energy, bags of money, stars, and a cornucopia of goods burst forth from your clicks and fly up into your scoreboard.  Your citizens are cheering you along as you accumulate points and the game itself tells you “Amazing!”  You can choose to post your progress on your Facebook feed, which I did for the first few levels, until I realized most of my friends (or at least the ones that Cityville chooses to display to me) are much more advanced than I in their playing level and I felt a bit sheepish admitting to my 1700+ connections on Facebook that I was playing this game so much.

One way to keep playing without depositing real cash into the game is by visiting friends’ towns as you can get energy (a gating factor to continued play.)  When you visit your friends, you see just how elaborate their cities are compared to yours, which inspired some city envy I must admit.  Some cities have rotating skyscrapers, baseball diamonds, carousels, and tons of farm animals grazing— they are laid out like a master city planner carefully outlined a plan to maximize profits and space for residences, businesses, and farming areas— unlike my town, where houses and grain silos are rather haphazardly laid out next to coffee and flower shops. 

When you visit your friends, you can send tourists and help them collect rents and water crops.  When you do these “goodwill” gestures, you earn hearts that go towards your reputation score.  I have not figured out how the reputation score helps you get to the next level of the game, but every time I log into Cityville from Facebook, friends of mine have gifted me building permits, mittens, tourists, and helped me harvest my crops so it must be doing some good beyond giving them energy.

I thought the game went up to Level 60 and Michael Arrington (last I checked) was at Level 59, but recently I found out that you can keep playing up to Level 80.  I’m on Level 20 so have a ways to go before I would tap out on levels.  Even though I realize I’m doing the same thing every time I log in except with more crops and buildings, e.g. once you get started, the game does not become more complex, I will likely keep playing and attempt to figure out a way now to play without having to dump more real cash into the game.  Recently I have seen ads at the bottom of my screen from Tapjoy advertising 50% off Valentine’s Day flowers and 100 City Cash.  In the worst case, if I am really needy for some City Cash, there’s always the option of sending some flowers to my mom for Valentine’s Day.